Page 56 - DCAP606_BUSINESS_INTELLIGENCE

Unit 4: Understanding OLAP

Self Assessment Notes

Fill in the blanks:
15. ................................. are like what you would do in linked spreadsheets, or in a
multidimensional spreadsheet.

16. ........................................ are like spreadsheet functions that have been extended to understand
OLAP.

4.6 Analysis Services Speed

OLAP delivers the simplest form of analysis, permitting any person to slice and dice interrelated
subsets of data or “cubes” with the click of a mouse. Users can investigate data using standard
OLAP characteristics such as page-by, pivot, sort, filter and drill up/down to flip through a
sequence of report views.

Notes OLAP analysis offers users primary access to their data warehouses in lieu of more
sophisticated investigation functionality needed by power users and analysts.
Most OLAP vendors supply Multi-dimensional OLAP (MOLAP) solutions to perform this kind
of analysis, but restricted cube capacity has burdened numerous IT managers by establishing
and organizing hundreds of overlapping cube databases to hold stride with growing
organizational claims. To get the most out of BI applications, however, OLAP investigation
desires to continue beyond the benchmark MOLAP cube and supply full speed-of-thought
interactivity against the whole data warehouse.

Analysis Services carries OLAP by letting you design, create, and manage multidimensional
organisations that contain data aggregated from other data sources, such as relational databases.
For data mining applications, Analysis Services permits you design, create, and visualize data
mining models that are assembled from other data sources by using a broad kind of industry-
standard data excavation algorithms. Figure 4.4 shows analysis of services concepts and objects.
Figure 4.4: Analysis of Services Concepts and Objects

Source: http://i.msdn.microsoft.com/dynimg/IC6000.gif

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